


In Our Bedroom After The War

by Araine



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Domesticity, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, The Long and Arduous Process of Rebuilding Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 09:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araine/pseuds/Araine
Summary: In the end they are left victorious. It is not without its costs. Or, Terra and Aqua find home.
Relationships: Aqua/Terra (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63
Collections: I'm With You - A Terraqua Fanzine





	In Our Bedroom After The War

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the I'm With You - Terraqua Fanzine project for including this work!! Please check them out at TerraquaFanzine on twitter! 
> 
> I'm so excited for you all to read this.

In the end they are left victorious. It is not without its costs. 

They pile into the gummi ship, crowding it near capacity. Donald and Goofy take the controls. There is no missing the hesitation at the conspicuous absence. Aqua reaches out, holds Ven and Terra’s hands tighter. 

The take off is smooth, and soon they are sailing away from the Keyblade Graveyard. Aqua gives it a last look as it fades away out the porthole. She hopes never to see it again. 

There is not much conversation on the ship as they hurtle between worlds. They are all exhausted, and although they just saved the worlds together they are still essentially strangers. 

Ventus and Roxas find time to marvel over the striking similarity in their appearances. It’s truly remarkable, as if Ventus had a twin all this time he never knew of. Aqua mumbles out a promise to help Roxas and Xion train with their Keyblades. 

“And you’re a master, right?” Axel asks. “That means you can confirm other masters, doesn’t it?” 

Aqua shrugs wearily. “Sure, we’ll oversee your Mark of Mastery when you’re ready,” she says. She doesn’t realize she’s included Terra in that statement until it’s out of her mouth, but she doesn’t take it back. If Yen Sid won’t confirm Terra’s Mastery after this, then she’ll damn well do it herself. “Once Ventus completes his, of course.”

Ven’s dawning smile is enough to light Aqua’s heart with joy. She answers his unasked question with a smile and a nod. 

She leans against a bulkhead and takes it all in. She still thinks that she will open her eyes and be in the Darkness, even now. This unbound joy seems like it could only exist in her dreams. 

Except Terra joins her, eyes asking a question that Aqua is only too happy to oblige. She makes room for him; smiles when he takes it. Aqua leans her head on Terra’s shoulder. He is too solid to be a dream. 

She closes her eyes. She cannot hold them open any longer. 

“Terra,” she murmurs, drowsiness overtaking her. “This is real, right?” 

Aqua feels Terra’s arm curl around her, feels him draw her into his chest even as she drifts deeper into sleep. At long last she can rest. 

“Yeah. Yeah this is real.” 

At the front of the ship, Ventus turns away from his low conversation with Lea towards his two oldest friends. He smiles, pleased, and lets them rest. 

\--

The Land of Departure sits waiting for them. Riku drops them off, with a promise to stay in touch. He is grieving worse than any of them, and yet there is a resilience that Aqua senses in him. 

He has grown from that boy, lost and scared in the Realm of Darkness. 

“We’ll see you soon,” she promises. “There’s a few things we have to take care of first.” 

“I understand,” Riku says, smiling lightly. “I need to help Mickey sort some things out, anyways.” 

“Sure,” Aqua says. “We need to decide how we’re going to pass on the Keyblades to the future. There’s not many Masters left, and there’s a few things you should know.” 

Riku grins, waves his gummi phone. “You know how to reach me.” 

Aqua scowls. She’s had a bear of a time trying to work out how to use the thing, and Riku knows it. 

Riku laughs, and Aqua smiles, and she bids him farewell. 

She turns back to find Terra and Ventus waiting for her at the gates to the castle. Together the three of them step over the threshold. At last they are home. 

There is no food in the pantry. Aqua has to mutter under her breath, fiddling with the castle’s magic until it starts stocking the shelves with a few staples. It will have to do, until she can do a more thorough review of the enchantments. They manage a decent dinner of rice and egg and a few spices. By the time they’re fed Terra is yawning and Ven is nearly falling forward into his supper and they unilaterally decide on bed. 

Aqua claims her old room. It’s unchanged, though dust has crept in through the locking spell. The room feels like returning to a self she no longer quite knows. She can remember being the eighteen year old who lined her windows with a collection of plush figures, and smiles nostalgically. 

She is still eighteen, Aqua reminds herself. She no longer feels eighteen. 

At least there are real pajamas. After Aqua has changed her bedding for sheets not saturated with dust she finds a pair. A blue t-shirt and pants, simple and made of soft cotton. 

Aqua strips off her armor, piece by piece. Her fingers shake as she does, and she has to take a few moments to breathe and remind herself:  _ you are safe here, there are no dark things here to come after you in the night… _

She summons Master’s Defender, weaves a quick alarm spell over her room. It is enough to keep her fingers from shaking, and Aqua strips off her shirt and shorts so she is only dressed in her underthings. She examines herself in her full length mirror. Her ribs are one long black-and-blue bruise from the chains which wrapped so tightly around her. It has stubbornly resisted Cure spells, and Aqua suspects it will need time to heal the old fashioned way. 

She pokes experimentally at the discolored skin, and winces when it stings under her fingers. She’s grown used to the ache of the bruise in the hours since the fight, though she is sure it will be sore and stiff tomorrow. 

A flash of inspiration has Aqua digging for a towel that she casts a small Blizzard spell on. It snap freezes, and Aqua lays it over her ribs gratefully. She ices first one side and then the other, for as long as she can tolerate it. 

“Aqua? Are you awake?” 

Aqua looks up, smiles at the sound of Terra’s voice. It’s going to take her a long time to get used to this again. “Yeah, come in.” 

She drops her alarm spell. There’s no thought of modesty. They have been training together so long and seen each other in almost all states of undress that it’s barely an afterthought. 

Terra eases open the door and draws a sharp breath. 

Aqua glances up, confused. Terra is staring, horrified, at her abdomen. At the striped bruising, already turning from angry red to a deep wounded purple. Most of it is indistinct, but a few of the dark lines across her skin bear the imprint of chains. 

“Terra,” Aqua says. 

“Does it hurt?” Terra asks, still staring stricken at the bruising. 

“It looks worse than it feels.” Aqua smiles, hoping to gentle Terra out of his horror. “It’s fine, really.” 

Terra shakes his head. “It’s not.” He closes his eyes. He looks like he might like to be sick. “I did that.” 

Aqua’s chest aches deeper than the skin deep pain of the bruising. “It wasn’t you.” 

“I remember enough of it.” 

Aqua takes Terra’s hand in hers. His eyes flutter open by degrees, confusion writ into his brow. Aqua traces Terra’s fingers with hers. She lingers on the calluses on his palms, on the way his knuckles curl, on the soft slope of his fingertips. Terra allows this slow exploration of his hands in watchful silence. Aqua guides Terra’s hand, splays his fingers so that he presses gently against her abdomen. 

“Maybe it was a part of you,” Aqua says, looking up into Terra’s opened eyes. She is close enough to see his individual lashes. His pupils, dark and wide, trace her features. “But you are capable of more gentleness than you know. I’ve seen that for a long time-- you should see it too.” 

Terra lets out one long breath. Leans his weary head against hers, like a man coming home after years at sea. “Only with you. Aqua--” 

“Stay,” Aqua says. “I don’t want to be alone.” 

Terra brushes Aqua’s hair back, strands slipping through his fingers. He presses his lips to hers, hesitant. Tender. Gentle. Aqua takes Terra’s hand in hers and feels, for the first time she can remember, truly safe. 

Terra stays. 

\--

“It says to put tab A into slot B and then immediately cast a holding enchantment.” Terra holds up the sheet of instructions to demonstrate. 

Aqua sifts through the haphazard pile of pieces. “There is no Tab A.” 

“Really?” Terra looks. “Isn’t that Tab A?” 

“No that’s Tab K. See, it’s got a Frost Rune on the end.” 

“Right. … What kind of bed needs a Frost enchantment?” 

Aqua shrugs. “Keep you cool while you’re sleeping?” 

Terra glances askance at the tiny rune. “What about in winter?” 

“There’s a Fire Rune on the opposite side. Oh, here’s Tab A!” She snatches up a piece out of the jumble.

“... Slot B is on the other end, though. And it’s the wrong shape.” 

Aqua inspects the piece, and sets it down with more force than necessary. She leans back to the floor, brow furrowed with exasperation. “Are you  _ kidding _ me? There’s two Tab As?” 

“Unless we’re supposed to apply some recursive geometry to this bed.” 

Aqua holds out her hand, eyes still closed. “Let me see those instructions.” She reads the instructions, scowl deepening. “We’re Keyblade Masters, how can this  _ possibly _ be this hard?” 

\--

Aqua looks at the room that used to be their Master’s from the doorway, unexplained hesitance keeping her from crossing the threshold. Terra stands with her, arm absently draped off her shoulder. It is one of Aqua’s secret delights of  _ being in a relationship,  _ this casual touch.

“Are we sure?” she asks, looking at the unused room. “About moving in together?” 

Terra’s look is a question Aqua doesn’t know how to answer. “We already live together. This is just more-- official. Same room.” 

“Sure. I mean, I’ve got my room all set up just as I like it. We didn’t make Ven move out even though we’ve got new students coming. If we need the room we can make expanding the student wing our next project.” 

“I think that’s a good idea,” Terra says. 

“Great!” Aqua says. “I can start drawing up plans, I suppose. You can do the walls…?”

Terra’s grip on Aqua’s shoulder tightens. Not uncomfortably, just enough so she can’t run away. “Aqua,” he says. “One thing at a time. I thought you wanted to move in together?” There is gentle concern in Terra’s eyes. 

“I do,” Aqua says quickly. She demurs. “It makes sense, right? We’re either sleeping in your room or mine all the time and-- we do need the room.” 

“But this room belonged to Master Eraqus?” 

Aqua glances at the bedchamber. She and Terra rarely came in here, Master Eraqus preferring decorum from his pupils. It still reminds Aqua of him, from the artifacts spread about to the plain bed. “It feels like we’re forgetting him,” she admits. 

Terra hugs Aqua around the shoulders. “I don’t think he would want us to keep a mausoleum,” he says. “Even if everything had gone right, this room would have been yours eventually as Successor. He’s moved on-- I think he would want us to do the same.” 

Aqua nods, and thinks of what Eraqus would say about her holding on so tightly to his ghost. “We could just teach from the student wing. It’ll be a big slumber party. I’m sure Eraqus wouldn’t object to that.” 

Terra laughs. “Let’s scandalize all the Old Masters while we’re at it.” 

“Sure, because we have such a good track record of following the tenets of the Old Masters.” 

“Maybe we can memorialize him some other way,” Terra continues. “A museum of Keyblade History, maybe. Somewhere to put these knicknacks.” 

Aqua looks around at the collected artifacts. Smiles. “They are a bit tacky.” 

Terra gestures to a large and particularly ugly lamp. “Like that thing. What right does that lamp have to even exist?” 

Moving out takes several days, and Aqua can’t say that she doesn’t get weepy seeing the grand room bare of all furnishings. Somehow, though, the blank canvas makes it easier to picture the room as theirs.

Aqua and Terra pick out paint and plaster, pillows and curtains. They move things from their old bedrooms to the new. Aqua spends an afternoon rearranging three bookshelves and throws a pillow at Terra when he suggests the library as a better home. They have an argument over a shapeless sculpture that Terra wants in the corner. 

It comes together one warm afternoon, sun spilling through the curtains and pooling on the turquoise rug. Aqua, hair held out of her face, rearranges the bedside table. Terra is stood atop a stool, straightening a painting. 

“Aqua,” he says, leaning back from the wall. “How does it look?” 

Aqua turns. The painting is anchoring the small desk, where two chairs sit for both of them. Past that is their shared bathroom and closet, and the lines of bookshelves and the ugly sculpture in the corner that Aqua’s sort of come to appreciate. She looks out over this effort that has become half him and half her and thinks,  _ This is home.  _

“It looks perfect.”

\--

They move the new students into the castle. There is barely enough room in the students’ wing, and the mention of expansion is put back on the table. Terra and Aqua both take on the task of teaching, growing more comfortable with it even as the group starts to settle into their new home. 

At the end of a long day, Aqua is always happy to return to their room. She’s come to think of it as a sanctuary away from the controlled chaos of her life. 

She pushes open the doors one winter evening to find a fire roaring in the fireplace, Terra stoking the wood to a comfortable blaze. He dusts soot off his hands as Aqua comes in from the cold. Even after all this time, his smile upon seeing her is undiminished. 

“How are the kids?” 

Aqua strips off her soaked gloves, tosses them in the hamper. “Great. We had a lesson in ice magic.” 

Terra glances out the window, which looks out on the courtyard. “I saw.” He grins. “Looked more like a snowball fight to me.” 

“Did it? They were learning tactics… and aim.” 

“That must be it.” 

Aqua comes up behind Terra, slips her arms around his waist. She buries her nose between his shoulder blades. Smells the clean scent of his shirt. Terra sighs. Freezing fingers find the exposed skin at the bottom of Terra’s shirt.

Terra jumps. “Your hands are like ice!” 

“Ice magic lesson,” Aqua explains, not moving away. “With bonuses in tactics and aim.” She moves her hands, seeking out the steady warmth of Terra’s body.

“We’ve got a whole fire,” Terra points out. He takes one of Aqua’s hands in his, folds her cold fingers through with his warm ones.

Aqua shakes her head. “This is better.” 

Terra squeezes Aqua’s hand harder, and lets her warm her hands on his chest. At last they ready themselves for bed. Aqua sleepily casts a small barrier over the fireplace, one that will let heat and nothing else through. Terra pulls down the bedcovers for Aqua and she climbs in gratefully. 

“I’m glad you had fun with the kids,” Terra says, wrapping his long limbs around Aqua in his usual cling. 

“They’re doing well. I think we should take them to another world soon. Maybe we can get Ven to supervise. Or Axel and Isa if he’s busy.” 

“Sure,” Terra says, but he’s distracted from the thought. He brushes his thumb restlessly across Aqua’s exposed stomach. Presses a soft kiss into her neck. “Have you ever thought about it? Having some of our own someday?” 

There are still some days when she isn’t sure if this life she lives is real. If it is deserved. Days when she is so full with joy that she wonders, after all they have endured, if it could ever be allowed to last. She still braces for the day things will fall apart. 

She has friends and family flung across all the known worlds. Every day she teaches bright and inquisitive and determined students in the same tradition that she was brought up in. Every night she comes back to this sanctuary she built with the man she has loved her whole life. 

Aqua squeezes Terra’s hand under the covers. “Yes,” she says. “I’ve thought about it.” 

Terra slides his thumb against the palm of Aqua’s hand. “And?” 

Aqua smiles. Kisses Terra, lips lingering. She is full up with warmth, and love, and happiness. Given the chance, she would share this feeling with as many as she possibly can. 

“We’d have to expand the castle again.” 

Terra freezes. Stares, astonished, as he realizes what she has said. Grins in delight. Presses his mouth flush to hers, still grinning wide. “That can be arranged.” 

“Hm,” Aqua says, sudden burst of joy erupting from her in giggles. “Are you sure you’re up to building a crib?” 


End file.
